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<title>Escaped Newlines (Using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC))</title>

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<h3 class="section" id="Slightly-Looser-Rules-for-Escaped-Newlines"><span>6.22 Slightly Looser Rules for Escaped Newlines<a class="copiable-link" href="#Slightly-Looser-Rules-for-Escaped-Newlines"> &para;</a></span></h3>
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<a class="index-entry-id" id="index-newlines-_0028escaped_0029"></a>

<p>The preprocessor treatment of escaped newlines is more relaxed 
than that specified by the C90 standard, which requires the newline
to immediately follow a backslash.  
GCC&rsquo;s implementation allows whitespace in the form
of spaces, horizontal and vertical tabs, and form feeds between the
backslash and the subsequent newline.  The preprocessor issues a
warning, but treats it as a valid escaped newline and combines the two
lines to form a single logical line.  This works within comments and
tokens, as well as between tokens.  Comments are <em class="emph">not</em> treated as
whitespace for the purposes of this relaxation, since they have not
yet been replaced with spaces.
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